Category Archives: Entertainment

Books/Art

‘The Leavers’ review

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By: Siri David

*Warning: This review contains spoilers

The novel ‘The Leavers’ is written by Lisa Ko. This novel is about a boy named Deming Guo who grows up in New York City with his mom Polly. Polly works at a nail salon and one day never comes home. Throughout the novel we learn about Polly’s backstory and how she gets detained by immigration services, while also learning about how this affects Deming and how his life changes.

In the start of the novel we learn about Deming’s childhood as he grew up with Polly and the struggles they went through. Polly had a hard time making enough money to support her family, so she was frequently taking out loans and trying to work as many hours as she could at the nail salon. All while this was happening Deming is going through school and he hates it. He is a very unmotivated kid and had no desire to learn or go to school. During this time they are living in an apartment with Polly’s boyfriend Leon. Leon’s sister Vivian and her son Micheal are also living with them. This helped Polly a lot as it was easier to find someone to watch over Deming if she was working.

One day when Polly goes to work she doesn’t come home. She is taken by ICE and Deming is left alone with Leon and his family. None of them knew what happened to Polly and they were all left in confusion. After some time Vivian decided to put Deming up for adoption, and he was adopted by a white couple in upstate New York. Their names are Peter and Kay.

They struggle a lot to connect with Deming due to him being adopted as an older kid, but also because he comes from a different cultural background. They try to change Deming to help him fit in more by changing his name to Daniel. This causes Deming to lose his sense of identity as he gets older. He also just feels disconnected because he still doesn’t know what happened to his mom.

Later on in the story when Deming grows up he gets reconnected with Micheal and Micheal helps him get in contact with his mom. He calls Polly and she is shocked to hear from him, we then get her whole side of the story. She was detained and was held by ICE for months and then was sent back to China. Once in China she got married and got a job, and she didn’t tell anyone about Deming. They reconnect and she finally tells her husband and he is shocked.

Deming then flies out to China to meet Polly. They reconnect but at the end of the book decide that it’s best for Polly to stay in China and for Deming to go back to New York, and they go their separate ways.

This novel represents the struggles that immigrants and children of immigrants face everyday. The raw emotions and feelings that Ko explains in the novel is what many immigrants face. Ko has a good way of bringing all perspectives into this book and changing the way I perceived the adoption process and program in America as she showed how unaware and innocuous Peter and Kay were when it came to Deming’s ethnic background.

This is a well written novel that shows problems that are very relevant in our world right now. It will take you into what immigrants face and it is truly heartbreaking. I recommend this novel to all who feel strongly about what’s happening in our nation and want to understand better or make a difference.

Movies/TV/Theaters

‘The Northman’ (2022) review

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By: Treshawn Ross

General info

‘The Northman’ was directed by Robert Eggers and it was co-written by Robert Eggers and Sjón. The budget for the movie was around 70 million. The movie came out in April of 2022. The movie slightly underperformed in the box office but it had a resurgence in VOD and home media which covered the losses. Many people consider the movie to be divisive for different reasons.

Plot summary (no major spoilers)

The movie focuses on Prince Amleth and his father, King Aurvandill. After the king comes back to his island of Hrafsney after a long military campaign he finds out that he is mortally wounded.

He prepares his son Amleth for kingship with a ceremony with a sorcerer. After this the king and his son are betrayed. Amleth vows revenge on the man who betrayed him.

What the movie did well

Cinematography- The great camerawork captures the mood of every scene; the lighting is usually darker to set a more somber mood.

Storyline- The story is very consistent throughout the movie, I never thought “How did we get here?” during the film. The film takes heavy inspiration from ‘Hamlet’ by Shakespeare and the Norse version of the story that came before ‘Hamlet’. But the film doesn’t simply retread these story beats, it’s made unique by the acting.

Acting- The actors in this film did a wonderful job portraying the Viking age. I thought Anya Taylor-Joy did a great job as the female lead “Olga” and Claes Bang portrayed Fjölnir perfectly.

Critiques

Dialogue- Some of the dialogue in the movie could’ve been more natural, sometimes it seemed forced or unrealistic. The characters only speak in large proclamations or riddle-like sentences which are similar to Shakespeare. This could throw many viewers off in my opinion.

Who I would recommend this movie to

I’d recommend this movie to people who are interested in Viking/Norse mythology and history, also people who enjoy movies centered around the theme of revenge. People who enjoy large scale period pieces would likely enjoy this movie as well. I would give this movie a 8.5/10.

You can watch ‘The Nortman’ on Netflix.

Books/Art

Summary and review of the 5th chapter of ‘Twilight’

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By: Ivy Dahl

Summary-

The chapter starts with Bella stumbling into class, so dazed that she doesn’t even realize she’s late. As she’s trying to acclimate to the already ongoing class, Eric and Mike invite her to a beach trip. She mumbles an acceptance, barely paying attention.

This same sense of disconnect follows her throughout her morning, coming to an end when her attention is drawn, like usual, during lunch to the Cullen’s table. Edward isn’t sitting there. Now she can peacefully shut her mind off again. She grabs a lemonade and sits with her friend Jessica, who giggles and gossips as usual, until one sentence pulls Bella out of her daze, “Edward Cullen’s staring at you,” she commented.

It turns out Edward had just been sitting at a different table than his siblings today, one that had completely slipped through Bella’s radar. Almost immediately she notices him beckoning him towards her. She mumbles an excuse to Jessica and goes to sit down at his table. The first thing out of her mouth to Edward is that them sitting together is very odd. He responds that if he’s going to hell, he’ll do it thoroughly. He doesn’t explain what he means by this and just continues to say that Bella’s friends are mad at him for stealing her away from them. They then go on to have a conversation where Bella questions Edward about all the strange things that have happened and about what he is. Like always, he refuses to give anything but cryptic warnings and deflection, and lunch ends.

Bella immediately races to class. As she arrives, her teacher is bringing in boxes with equipment to find out their blood types as a biology lesson. Bella feels extremely faint at the mention of blood and leans her head against her desk, lightheaded. Mike notices this and offers to take her to the nurse. Once outside, and halfway to the nurse’s office, Bella sits down on the sidewalk, wanting to rest for a moment. Through her lightheadedness she hears the voice of Edward Cullen asking Mike what’s wrong with her. His voice offers to carry Bella the rest of the way there. Bella looks up, and before she can get a word out of her mouth, Edward scoops her into his arms, carrying her to the nurses office. When they arrive, he refuses to leave at the request of the nurse. He gets her out of the rest of the school day by telling the nurse that she’s sick and that he’s going to drive her home. Bella asks him if he’s going to the beach party that’s happening, but when he learns the beach, La Push, he declines. He drives her home.

Review-

This confusing relationship between Edward and Bella is obviously taking a huge toll on Bella, even to the point where she’s shutting out almost everything around her that doesn’t involve him. That’s a pretty crazy reaction to someone who you’ve barely known for a couple of weeks and regularly shuns you. But on the other hand, if someone single handedly saved me from a car crash, I’d probably think about them a lot too.

Bella also seems to attract danger and disturbances like a light attracts a moth, which is a going trend that makes me grow more on edge going into every following chapter. I’d give this chapter a 7/10.

Movies/TV/Theaters

‘The Hangover Part III’ review

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By: Kendra Shanklin

*Warning: this review contains spoilers

‘The Hangover Part 3’ was released May 20th, 2013 and is about 4 guys named Stu, Alan, Phil, and Doug who wanted to go on a road trip to get their friend Alan in a rehab facility after his father passed away. While on the road trip they get in a situation where they get chased and kidnapped not knowing why. This movie is rated R for its drug/alcohol use, pervasive language and some violence.

*Recap

After they get kidnapped a man comes out of a car named Marshall, and Stu asks why they are there. Marshall says because one of his guys sold Alan some drugs by accident. After that, he then says that there’s a friend of theirs named Mr. Chow that stole over 20 million dollars worth of gold from him.

Marshall then tells them that he’s giving them a mission to retrieve the 20 million dollars back for him and told them he will be taking their friend Doug until they complete it. Marshall then leaves in a car taking Doug with him.

While they’re at the gas station filling up their car with gas, Alan comes out of the store saying he got a text a few days ago. Thinking it was a random person but re-reading the text now, he realized there’s a possibility that it could be Mr. Chow. They send him a text pretending to be Alan saying how he wants to see him. Chow gives them an address to meet up at and tells Alan to not bring anybody and to be alone.

My review:

I love this movie and I like how there’s drama and comedy to it. I love watching these movies in my free time when I have nothing else to do. This movie is probably one of my favorites to watch of all time. I love how they have to work out how to get Doug back, and the mystery around it all. I recommend watching it if you like comedy and drama. I rate this movie a 10/10

Thank you for reading my review. I hope you’re willing to watch the show after reading this.

You can watch ‘The Hangover Part 3’ on Netflix, Apple tv, and Prime Video.

Tech/Games

JOYSTiCK Reviews Ep. 20B: ‘Pokémon Legends: Z-A’ – Putting the “FUN” in Hypothermia

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By: Daniel Kendle

2 logs remain.

Oh…hello again. It’s me, *cough* M-Mr. Whatshisname. Surprised I made it through last night? No need to fret: even th-this French, uh, tundra has no match against this old d-dog.

But that’s enough about me. This is a review about ‘Pokémon Legends: Z-A,’ remember? Not surprised if you didn’t: my tapes from the first part of this article were mixed with other tapes, ones centered around my plights with hypothermic bone cancer. Don’t worry, I fixed that whole mess. Today’s review will be much more “focused.” *cough*

With that aside, we’ve got 2 more sections to dive into. So without further ado, let’s dive in!

PART 3: GRAPHICS

As I can attest to as a resident of this icy, radiative hellscape, France is very pretty! The countryside is, at least; the jury’s still out on Paris itself. You see, the first line in this paragraph was a device called irony.

Jokes aside, Paris is – or at least used to be – a very pretty town. And since ‘Z-A’ decides to base its entire story in Lumiose City (a direct translation of Paris), that obviously gave the game’s developers, Gamefreak, a tricky situation. 3-D ‘Pokemon’ games on the Switch have never been lookers per say, but with this smaller, more restrictive environment, this could be the opportunity for polish that this team has been waiting for. So: did it deliver?

Uh…yeah. Kind of.

I played this game on the Switch 2, which supports 60 FPS and improved texture resolutions. Of course, this means that the game was also built for the Switch 1, which definitely hindered possible graphical fidelity here. Foliage, while populous in both versions, is still used sparingly in grassy areas, like parks. The same goes for models with high polygon counts, like humans: the Switch 1 can’t handle too many on screen at once, meaning the Switch 2 experience is hindered subsequently.

Thankfully, the game doesn’t look terrible overall. In fact, bare your teeth, but I think it looks pretty good! Sorry to all IGN reviewers out there, but the frostbite in my brain must’ve given me something you lack: a controversially-positive opinion! While nothing exceptional visuals-wise, this game is easily the best-looking mainline ‘Pokémon’ game on either console mentioned. You can definitely sense a strong level of polish here, likely a result of skipping a major game release in 2024.

The Pokémon themselves look nice, as do the humans. Gamefreak ditched the realistic textures of ‘Scarlet’ and ‘Violet’ and gave entities a more basic palette, which I wholeheartedly prefer. The choice comes across very intentionally, though, and complements the Pokémon’s natural rim-lighting.

Textures are also much more polished. Again: the Switch 1 version is likely worse in this regard, but going purely off of the sequel console’s specs, I’d call it a massive improvement over past titles.

Buildings are a misfire for me, though. They’re basically just big textured boxes, with little physical depth. Balconies are squashed and flat, being just a part of the mapped image of the building face itself. The same is true for most columns and parapets, and it brings their beauty down a bunch.

While ‘Pokémon Legends: Z-A’ doesn’t turn the wheel on its head graphically, it does well in pushing the wheel forward. For the flack recent games have received for their visuals, it’s good to see a modern title be given some more polish and time in the oven – and its due flowers.

PART 4: MUSIC

1 log remains.

The fire, it’s…i-it’s…

…l-let’s talk about the music, yeah! *cough* This is another source of praise for me, like with most ‘Pokémon’ games. If there’s anything, anything consistent about this series at all, it’d be this area. So how’s about we rapid-fire through my thoughts on some in particular, like with the Mega Evolution section. That way, I can say more about the soundtrack other than, “it’s good.”

  • To start a bit negative, the game only has 1 day and 1 night theme. Both of them are great, but after so many hours in the game, they gradually become repetitive to hear. The night them especially; the jazzy instrumentals, while nice at first, become grading over time.
  • The trainer battle theme during the Z-A Royale is really cool in an almost psychedelic way. Even though you hear this pretty often too, it never succumbed to the repetition of the day and night tracks.
  • Canari’s battle theme is peppy and upbeat, which is fun. Fits a Twitch streamer well, I suppose.
  • Corbeau’s battle music is easily my favorite in the game. It’s sinister and dire, yet the modern synthesizers give it a slick energy that I really love. A highlight of the soundtrack overall.
  • I’m not the biggest fan of electro swing, but even I quite like Jacinthe’s battle music. The overwhelming instrumentals at the beginning were befitting for her cheery, albeit psychopathic tendencies in the story.
  • Finally, the battle music for Team Flare Nouveau is among the best of the remixes here. It carries the manic energy of the original forward strongly, and is also among the soundtrack’s highs.

To conclude, the soundtrack for ‘Pokémon Legends: Z-A’ is another slam dunk for the team overall. It’s funky, weird, and alluring in all the right ways. I can’t deny the mastery at work here with this albu-!

0 logs remain.

…w-what? But…I wasn’t ready! I still needed to conclude my article and give the game an 8/10! I needed to say that the game was far-and-away the best mainline ‘Pokémon’ game on the Switch!

Death befits the ignorant, not the ready.

No…no! I-I can’t give up now. My body, my mind…we still have so much life left to live! My saga can’t end here!

This is not your will.

…

This is not your choice.

…

This is not your life.

Travel/Food

Reviewing a hot chocolate recipe from Instagram

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By: Norah Hoglund

One of the best parts of wintertime is drinking hot chocolate. I decided to review a recipe for French hot chocolate that I saw on Instagram. I got the recipe from cookingwithkian.

Here is the link to the video: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DGofH9MyoFp/?igsh=MWltaXhia3dzZXdwbQ==

Review

Process:

This recipe makes a more gourmet and rich hot chocolate, so it takes a little bit of extra effort to make. The 2 elements are the whipped cream and the hot chocolate, which are both pretty easy to make within themselves. Heating and mixing the milk and cream and sugar is quite easy, as long as you mix it. Making the whipped cream took a few minutes, because you have to use a hand mixer to make the heavy cream into whipped cream. The recipe makes enough to store in the fridge, which is good because it lasts a few days.

Taste:

This hot chocolate was so chocolatey and rich. It was a lot thicker than most hot chocolate because of the heavy cream. A few changes that I made to the recipe were adding a little bit of cocoa powder, because I didn’t have dark chocolate, and adding vanilla extract to the hot chocolate. Adding the vanilla adds extra flavor and adding the chocolate adds extra depth to the flavor. I also really enjoyed the whipped cream on top.

Overall:

Overall, I think this recipe is really fancy and tasty and a good treat to make in the winter. It is so rich that you can dilute it with milk and it still tastes very good. I rate the recipe a 9/10.

Recipe

Ingredients

Hot chocolate

  • 9oz 70% dark chocolate, chopped
  • 1½ cup whole milk
  • ½ cup heavy cream
  • 1½ Tbsp granulated sugar
  • Very small pinch of salt

Vanilla Cream

  • 2 cups cream
  • 1-2 vanilla beans or 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • 2 Tbsp granulated sugar

Serve with croissants (optional)

For the Vanilla cream, in a Large bowl add, heavy cream, granulated sugar and vanilla. Mix with a hand mixer or whisk until stiff peaks form. Add to a piping bag fitted with a star tip and set aside.

For the hot chocolate, heat a medium pot over medium low heat, add whole milk, heavy cream and sugar. Whisk well, heat until steamy hot, turn off the heat, then add the chopped chocolate and salt. Whisk until the chocolate melts. Keep warm. In a small bowl pipe the whipped cream into a large mound.

Serve with the hot chocolate and croissants.

Editorials/Student Voice, Music/Concerts

How is Spotify Wrapped assembled?

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By: Karl Salkowski

(Generated with Microsoft Copilot)

On the morning of December 3rd, hundreds of millions of people opened their Spotify Wrapped, resulting in millions of shares and posts. But what is a Spotify Wrapped? And why are so many people embarrassed about it?

Every year since 2015 Spotify has released a personally curated selection of each user’s listening habits. The specific day it releases is always a mystery, but Spotify Wrapped day always lands sometime between the last week of November and the first week of December.

Since the beginning, Spotify has shown you your top artists and songs, but each year they add more and more new features and interesting statistics. The highlight of Wrapped 2024 was an AI personalized podcast discussing your listening habits, while in 2025 Spotify gave out estimated listening ages and had you guess who was your top artist of the year. Needless to say, each year Spotify adds new and inventive features to their yearly marketing campaign in order to make it more trendy and viral.

But the question still remains: Why are so many people embarrassed of what they listen to? It turns out that this is actually much more complicated than it seems. Spotify stops collecting data for Spotify Wrapped sometime between mid-October and early November. This means that everything you listened to in the last month to 6 weeks prior is not taken into account. Many people feel that their Wrapped feels weighted towards the beginning of the year, and this explains why. It’s natural that people’s music tastes evolve over time, which explains how these otherwise mundane statistics can actually be very interesting and surprising.

Over the years, as Spotify Wrapped becomes more and more viral, imitations become more and more common. End-of-the-year recaps have become common in an abundance of apps including Apple Music, Amazon, YouTube, and Duolingo.

Spotify Wrapped is a genius marketing campaign only becoming more popular and mainstream each year. End-of-year recaps across websites and apps will only become more and more common, but these recaps aren’t just silly and fun; they also raise important questions about personal data and how it’s stored and shared online.

Editorials/Student Voice, Entertainment

Marilyn Monroe and Sabrina Carpenter

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By: Charlotte Aver

Many people have emulated Marilyn Monroe over the years, but current pop star Sabrina Carpenter may have more similarities than most people who try and pick up Monroe’s torch, and the reason is quite interesting. Behind the curly blonde hair, Marilyn Monroe was an actor, a natural performer, and a turning point in how Hollywood cast women. Sabrina Carpenter began as a child entertainer, is an actor, a singer and a producer.

Marilyn Monroe was born on June 1st, 1926 in Los Angeles. When she was 16 she went to work as a riveter making airplane parts in WWII; she stopped when she was ‘discovered’ by a photographer at 18 and signed with a modeling agency. She started as a pin up girl and was later found by an acting agency that led her into the world of the movies. During her time in Hollywood she appeared in 29 films, and she died with four more either never completed or released. At the height of her career she starred in several classics: ‘Gentlemen Prefer Blondes‘, ‘The Seven Year Itch’, and Some ‘Like It Hot’ are probably the best known. She died from a sleeping pill overdose and it is widely accepted as suicide.

Sabrina Carpenter was born on May 11, 1999 in Pennsylvania. She was discovered by the Disney channel when she placed third in a singing contest hosted by Miley Cyrus in 2009. She signed a contract with Disney’s Hollywood Records in 2014 and was cast in the lead role of ‘Girl Meets World’. Her contract specified that she release five albums marketed towards teens, and although it allowed her entry to the music industry, the contract held her back creatively. In 2024, she broke her contract after only four albums and signed with Island Records, releasing ’emails I can’t send’ with two hits “nonsense” and “feather”. She also released “Espresso” as a prelude to her album ‘Short n’ Sweet’. It went to number one on the Billboard charts and was her first true breakthrough song.

You might wonder what a 50’s pin up girl and a Disney child star could have in common; it has to do with their hair! They both play the role of the dumb blonde for the media, while in reality both are actually quite witty and smart. Marilyn Monroe was constantly criticized for almost anything she did, likewise Sabrina Carpenter is constantly criticized for even the smallest things.

The marketing for Marilyn Monroe cast her almost exclusively into dumb blonde roles constructed for the male gaze. While Monroe was a part of her image creation she grew frustrated that she was unable to break out of the typecasting and sexualization of her public persona. Many people assume this frustration is behind her presumed suicide. In the decade before Monroe was a star, most of the famous female actors were strong and less sexualized; they had a greater share of female audience than Monroe who catered to the male movie goers.

In contrast, Sabrina Carpenter is constantly criticized for targeting the male gaze, but she is doing so ironically. She is presenting herself as the breathless bimbo and at the same time calling out the idiocy of men’s actions in a witty way. If she was truly targeting a male audience, her concerts would not mainly be attended by women, so it is clear she is using the Monroe “dumb blonde effect” to her benefit.

Many pop stars cultivate the similarities between themselves and Marilyn Monroe because they want her success in Hollywood to boost their career. Entertainers and their managers attempt to use Monroe’s template to both increase their audience and invoke a sense of nostalgia for the “golden age” of Hollywood. Madonna is a perfect example of this behavior; her blonde hair, sexualized image and early music all referenced Monroe and she achieved huge success.

My theory is that Sabrina Carpenter is also leveraging the same template, but she is doing so with satire and a greater sense of her own agency. Where Marilyn Monroe was trapped by the image she created, Sabrina Carpenter will hopefully be able to control her own destiny.

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